Prices in the Hamptons remain flat, despite gains in the luxury market

Though luxury sales in the Hamptons saw a boost in the first quarter of 2018, the market, on the whole, remained flat.

According to a new report by Douglas Elliman, the median sales price in the Hamptons was $995,000 — the same seen in the first and fourth quarters of 2017.

“I don’t think you could come up with a textbook definition of stable without looking at those numbers,” said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Miller Samuel and author of the Elliman report. “Buyers haven’t been budging. It’s the sellers that have to decide if they meet the buyers at the market.”

Meanwhile, the median sales price for the luxury properties — the top 10 percent of sales — increased 27.5 percent year-over-year, reaching $6.6 million in the first quarter of 2018. Miller said that’s mostly due to the fact that what sold last quarter happened to skew to the higher end.

On the North Fork, the median sales price increased 17.9 percent year-over-year to $612,500. Listing inventory decreased 5.4 percent from the same time last year, dropping to 332, according to the report. Miller said the high-end was relatively quiet, mirroring the trend on Long Island on the whole, where more modest-priced housing is in higher demand. The median sales price for luxury properties was $1.5 million, a 23.7 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2017.

“It was not about the high-end,” Miller said. “While the high-end was quiet this quarter, the rest of the market was brisk.”